A proposal to reduce the long waiting times for people needing inpatient mental health services is being heard Tuesday by a key state senate committee.

On average 45 people a day in New Hampshire are waiting for residential psychiatric care at the state’s hospital in Concord. In the meantime, these patients have to wait in overcrowded emergency rooms for days, even weeks.

“That’s the really scary point here when you understand that these are people with families – they just want services, they just want help for their loved ones,” Sununu said Friday while touring the emergency room at Concord Hospital.

Bradley’s proposal would add 20 new beds for those with severe mental illness as well as 40 new transitional beds and an additional mobile crisis unit. The state's Department of Health and Human Services will be in charge of the application process with strict deadlines on when these beds should be made available.

The measure also creates a special child advocate in order to help address problems at the state's child protection services agency.

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After a private tour of Concord Hospital’s emergency department, which on one day in February had 22 patients awaiting psychiatric services in a space designed for 6, Governor Sununu told reporters New Hampshire needs as many as 50 new beds for mental health patients, but he wants to create a mental health system where demand is less.

The average number of people waiting to gain access to a mental health bed in New Hampshire is now 46, up from nine in 2013.

The Portsmouth Herald reports that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu says he gets daily reports on the issue which he calls a crisis.

The governor has a meeting scheduled for Monday to develop plans to tackle the problem.

The executive director of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance of Mental Illness says the problem is exacerbated by hospitals closing their psychiatric units to focus on more profitable endeavors.

Portsmouth Regional Hospital will open more beds to psychiatric patients. The hospital hopes those beds will alleviate a backlog of patients boarded in emergency rooms.

On one day last month, a record 68 patients in acute mental health crises were stuck in emergency rooms around the state, waiting for a bed at New Hampshire Hospital, the state's lone psychiatric hospital. Now Portsmouth Regional will increase its inpatient psychiatric beds from eight to twelve in the hopes of chipping away at that wait time.